Chapter 4 The Immigration Act of 1965 and a New Group of Korean Americans

Background:

In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that there were 1,076,872 Koreans in the United States. What caused this dramatic increase in the Korean American population? Were there any changes in the political environment that facilitated such a rapid influx of immigrants from Korea? In this chapter, we answer these questions.

First and foremost, it is very important to understand what was happening in the United States around the time that it opened its doors to a large number of immigrants from Korea. The late 1960s and early 1970s in the United States was an era of the Civil Rights Movement. Working class individuals and other racial minorities joined the African American-led fight against racial and economic inequalities in the United States. Many activists carried slogans such as “Serve the People” and “Power to the People.”

One of the byproducts of the Civil Rights Movement was the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965 which abolished “the 1920s system that favored immigrants of Western European origins.” More specifically, the Immigration Act of 1965 removed the token quotas placed on Asian immigration, and allowed a maximum of 170,000 Eastern Hemisphere immigrants to enter the United States per year. In addition, the law did not place any quota on immediate family members such as spouses, children under the age of eighteen, and parents of U.S. citizens.

The primary purpose of the Immigration Act of 1965 was family reunification. However, many Koreans who did not have family members in the United States at the time took advantage of another provision in the Immigration Act of 1965 which sought to recruit professionals and skilled workers from overseas. In 1969, according to Bill Ong Hing, 23.2 percent of Korean immigrants used the occupational categories. An additional 11.6 percent entered the United States as immigrant investors in the same year.

Many new Korean immigrants were highly skilled professionals from urban areas. Class background was not the only difference between the earlier Korean immigrants and the newcomers. Unlike the earlier Koreans who were mostly bachelors, new immigrants came to the United States with their families. They did not view themselves as “sojourners” or exiles, but saw themselves as immigrants seeking a stable life in the United States. Furthermore, many newly arrived immigrants entered the service or technology sectors instead of going into manufacturing and agricultural sectors like earlier immigrants.

What pushed these professionals to leave their homeland and immigrate to the United States? One important push factor was the political instability of South Korea after the Korean War. To briefly explain the political atmosphere, a military coup followed immediately after the collapse of Syngman Rhee‟s government. Consequently, Major General Chung Hee Park took over the government. Koreans‟ political right to criticize the government was severely restricted during his military dictatorship.

Chung Hee Park and the Military Coup of May 16, 1961 (Photo from the Overseas Koreans Foundation)

Under his leadership from 1961 to 1979, South Korea‟s export-oriented economy developed rapidly. Though the economy developed quickly in South Korea, the number of white-collar jobs did not match the number of highly educated Koreans in the city. More than one out of every four males with college degrees was unable to utilize their education to find professional or managerial jobs. This fierce competition thus pushed Koreans to seek better employment opportunities outside of Korea. In short, political instability and labor market competition of the 1960s and 1970s pushed many highly educated Koreans to immigrate to the United States.

However, what might have appeared as an open door policy did not last for too long. In 1976, for example, the provision that was designed to recruit medical doctors from overseas became restricted as a result of an intense lobby of the American Medical Association that feared competition with Korean physicians and surgeons. Almost simultaneously, the South Korean government introduced a law that restricted the emigration of large property holders and high- ranking military personnel. By this time, the restructured capitalist economy in Korea also improved the lives of upper-middle class Koreans. Therefore, since the 1980s, many wealthy Koreans have had the incentive to remain in Korea instead of leaving their homeland.

The change in immigration laws and the widening income inequality in South Korea affected the social structure of Korean Americans. Studies show that the median income of Korean Americans has declined while there has been an increase in the number of Korean Americans living below the poverty line because a greater proportion of working class from Korea have used their kinship ties with American citizens to enter the United States.

Though these newly arrived Korean immigrants came to the “land of opportunity” with hopes to achieve the American dream, they faced discrimination like many earlier immigrants. Korean immigrants educated in the fields of medicine, teaching, and administration realized that there were limited employment opportunities for racial minorities due to the non-transferability of educational capital and language barriers. A large number of these professional Korean immigrants resorted to opening their own small businesses such as liquor stores, greengroceries, and restaurants in segregated minority neighborhoods. The development of small businesses in the inner city eventually led to Sa-I-Gu, the violence and tragedy of the Los Angeles riots of 1992.